Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder

Someone pointed this out on Tribe.net recently, and though it's always been one of my favorite songs, I never made the connection before.

U2's Where The Streets Have No Name

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

The city's aflood
And our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled in dust
I'll show you a place
High on a desert plain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do
Our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, and I see love
See our love turn to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

"Out of this world" by the Cure always brings me right back to the Playa everytime I listen to it.

As we look back at it all, and I know we will.
You and me wide eyed.
I wonder will we really remember how it feels to be this alive.
I know we have to go, I realize, we only get to stay so long.
Always have to go back to real lives, where we belong.
As we think back to this as Im sure we will, me and you here right now.
will we forget the way it really is, why it feels like this and how.
and we always have to go I realize.
we always have to say goodbye.
Always have to go back to real lives
real lives are the reason why we want to live another life.
we want to feel another time.

Imagine of you will ............ round squares..... Not spherical cubes.............But round squares.

As the people here grow colderI turn to my computerAnd spend my evenings with itLike a friendI was loading a new programmeI had ordered from a magazine"Are you lonely, are you lost?This voice console is a must"I press Execute

CHORUSHello, I know that you've been feeling tiredI bring you love and deeper understandingHello, I know that you're unhappy,I bring you love and deeper understanding...

COFFEE CAMP: "The Social Hub of the Uncivilized World"
"Remember- Drink coffee...it's for your own good"
"DRINK IT!"
"...it's only just begun."
"To Percolate & Serve."

The future has imploded into the present. With no nuclear war, the new battlefields are people’s minds and souls. Megacorporations are the new government. The computer generated info-domains are the new frontiers. Though there is better living through science and chemistry, we are all becoming cyborgs.

The computer is the new “cool tool,” and though we say “all information should be free,” it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit, so mistrust authority.

Cyberpunks are the true rebels. Cyberculture is coming in under the radar of ordinary society. An unholy alliance of the tech world, and the world of organized dissent.

I have not heard lutes beckon me, nor the brazen bugles call,But once in the dim of a haunted lea I heard the silence fall.I have not heard the regal drum, nor seen the flags unfurled,But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world.

I have not seen the horsemen fall before the hurtling host,But I have paced a silent hall where each step waked a ghost.I have not kissed the tiger-feet of a strange-eyed golden god,But I have walked a city's street where no man else had trod.

I have not raised the canopies that shelter revelling kings,But I have fled from crimson eyes and black unearthly wings.I have not knelt outside the door to kiss a pallid queen,But I have seen a ghostly shore that no man else has seen.

I have not seen the standards sweep from keep and castle wall,But I have seen a woman leap from a dragon's crimson stall,And I have heard strange surges boom that no man heard before,And seen a strange black city loom on a mystic night-black shore.

And I have felt the sudden blow of a nameless wind's cold breath,And watched the grisly pilgrims go that walk the roads of Death,And I have seen black valleys gape, abysses in the gloom,And I have fought the deathless Ape that guards the Doors of Doom.

I have not seen the face of Pan, nor mocked the Dryad's haste,But I have trailed a dark-eyed Man across a windy waste.I have not died as men may die, nor sin as men have sinned,But I have reached a misty sky upon a granite wind.

Were gonna break out the hats and hooters
When josie comes home
Were gonna rev up the motor scooters
When josie comes home to stay
Were gonna park in the street
Sleep on the beach and make it
Throw down the jam till the girls say when
Lay down the law and break it
When josie comes home

When josie comes home
So good
Shes the pride of the neighborhood
Shes the raw flame
The live wire
She prays like a roman
With her eyes on fire

Jo would you love to scrapple
Shell never say no
Shine up the battle apple
Well shake em all down tonight
Were gonna mix in the street
Strike at the stroke of midnight
Dance on the bones till the girls say when
Pick up whats left by daylight
When josie comes home

When josie comes home
So bad
Shes the best friend we ever had
Shes the raw flame
The live wire
She prays like a roman
With her eyes on fire

When josie comes home
So good
Shes the pride of the neighborhood
Shes the raw flame
The live wire
She prays like a roman
With her eyes on fire

Hmmm....my first thought was side 1 of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, except that when I listened to it as a teenager it was the future and now, quite a few years later, it's my present. Now when I hear it I want to say "Shut up, Pink Floyd! Leave me alone, damn you!" But I listen to it once in awhile anyway.....
"Sheep" from Pink Floyd's Animals is another cheery future theme: "Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away, only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air."
Actually, "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica is my personal Burning Man theme song. It was on the radio when I was leaving BM two burns ago and it just seemed perfect.

Wait for me if I don't show up
take from me this hypocrite's cup
somewhere around the world
someone would love to have my first world problems
kill the moon, turn out the sun
lock your door and load your gun
free at last, yeah the time has come to choose

Man makes God so God can make man
man makes the devil so that he can understand
why it is that every day
everything always turns out this way
you and me, we were never here
you and me, we were not that clear
you and me, we died a long, long time ago

Don't think, just come along
I do believe that it won't be long
and everything's open all night and all day anyway
build me a ship of wood and steel
bring me a net and a fishing reel
sail me to the place
where I can find my brother, sleeping sound

Wait for me if I don't show up
take from me this hypocrite's cup
and kill the moon, turn out the sun
omissions of the omen

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
'Cos when we stop and look around us,
There is nothing that we need,
In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the war of love is for.

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be.

And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you.

I'm looking for someone to change my life,
I'm looking for a miracle in my life,
And if you could see what it's done to me,
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.

Between the silence of the mountains,
And the crashing of the sea,
There lies a land I once lived in,
And she's waiting there for me,
But in the grey of the morning,
My mind becomes confused,
Between the dead and the sleeping,
And the road that I must chose.

I'm looking for someone to change my life,
I'm looking for a miracle in my life,
And if you could see what it's done to me,
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to,
The land that I once knew,
To learn as we grow old,
The secrets of our soul.

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me,
It's more the way you really mean it
When you tell me what will be.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
'Cos when we stop and look around us,
There is nothing that we need,
In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the war of love is for.

It's not a song exactly, but sometimes impassioned oratory can be considered a second cousin to singing...

Some of you know I'm working on the Barack Obama campaign. It's not a very distant future but when I think of his campaign and presidency, the "lyrics" that come to mind are those of the speech Charlie Chaplin gave at the end of <i>The Great Dictator</i>.

Schulz

Speak - it is our only hope.

The Jewish Barber

Hope... I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We
all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can
provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too
much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even
now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To
those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the
people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish...

Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as
cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in
your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written "the kingdom of God is within man" - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and
security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us
fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science
and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
---
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting - the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise
above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and
to all of us. Look up. Look up."